In Nevada, 40,000 people are stepping up to the cutting edge of precision medicine. They are getting their DNA deciphered by the testing company Helix. The idea of the Healthy Nevada project is to link genetic and medical data with information about the environment to get a clearer picture of all the factors that influence health. The free tests are going like hot cakes.

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing first came on the market about a decade ago, but I resisted the temptation to see what health information is hidden in my DNA — until now.

As a molecular biology writer, I’ve been skeptical that the field of genetics is mature enough to accurately predict health (see related article). What finally motivated me to send away my DNA in the mail was the...

In a months-long investigation of consumer genetic testing, molecular biology senior writer Tina Hesman Saey sent a cheek swab or spit sample to eight companies. Once her results were in, she talked to genetics researchers and people who received life-changing news based on their DNA.

In this multipart package, Saey explores what you can expect to learn from consumer genetic testing and...

Using DNA to find a killer sounds easy: Upload some DNA to a database, get a match and — bingo — suspect found. But it took new genetic sleuthing tools to track down the man suspected of being the Golden State Killer.

Investigators have confirmed they used a public genealogy database, GEDmatch, to connect crime scene evidence to distant relatives of Joseph James DeAngelo. The 72-year-old...

I first suspected I might be inhabited by traitors when I read a research paper linking gut bacteria to obesity. I was a newspaper reporter in St. Louis in 2006 when local researchers in Jeffrey Gordon’s lab at Washington University found that the mix of bacteria in the gut can help determine whether a mouse is lean or obese. I’ve been writing about the microbiome — the microbes that inhabit...